JackKieser

I love how the recent bad Sonic games have somehow magically made the original Sonic games (1-3 + K) into bad games retroactively.

I think the people making Sonic games (Dimps, in this case) just have to learn that we aren't looking for anything revolutionary in a Sonic game; we just want a simple, straightforward game design with depth in level design, not mechanics. Take the leaked Lost Labrinth (Act 1), for instance. It's not necessary. We aren't looking for anything crazy. We don't need to be wow'ed with new level mechanics, or an intricate story, or a whole bunch of characters... we just want something simple and fun.

This is the greatest invention for mankind since the blowjob and automatic toilets. Someone get Sweden the phone; I think a Nobel Prize is in order. Or at least a few dozen hookers.

That can't possibly be why; it must be because of how absolutely terrible the game is. After all, these people have played and reviewed the Gold copies of the game. OH, WAI--

I'm kind of getting tired of multiquoting and breaking up posts, so I'll just do this. @Zircon: I've just come from a 500+ page war on SWF about Metaknight in which a physics major self-parsed, analyzed, and graphed out 13 months worth of tournament data to prove a point; "self-evidence" won't cut if for me, personally. If you say you know how 80's game designers were thinking, I'm going to want to know how, and just saying "oh, there were trends somewhere" doesn't really help me understand your point of view. That being said, we're working with computer games; everything will always be numeric. Even shooters are numeric. That's a trend that will never go away; play Heavy Rain enough, and I guarantee you you'll be able to boil it down to a set of static decisions and will be able to mathematically plot down any path you want. If you're making a game in a genre that not only accepted this early on, but embraced it, has embraced it ever since, and shows no signs of ending said embracing, trying to take out as much of that math as possible probably isn't such a good move. @Liz: What trends did he really mention, exactly? He said that games usually, if not always, have numbers, even non-computer games. Ok, that's all well and good. He talks about turn-based stuff, which is irrelevant because we're talking about ME2, and even so, who cares? It's not like turn-based games are inferior or anything. Old styles survive because they work and are good; there is a reason lots of buildings still use Grecian column styles from the B.C. ages... because they work.

Well, I fully understand that adding new events and things to do to the Wards/Presidium would have taken time/resources, but I've always been the kind of person to not like it when sequels leave out already-made resources. I mean, you already have the models/collision data, and that's the hardest part, and making some more little quests, to me, is worth making the game world a more convincing place. Honestly, I'd rather have all the areas from the first game make a second appearance than have all those codex entries; imagine how long those took to write? Characters say things while you walk, sometimes, maybe... but they never actually converse to each other. It's when they interact with each other that makes the game world more immersive and fleshed out, and considering how much Bioware works on making your secondaries into believable characters, I think it's odd to leave out even the small things... because it's the details that make the world. Dude... I've played through it literally 9 times. It's stupid because there is NO REASON to ever use older guns in ME2, except for the case of the Heavy Pistol (because of the ammo count). Look at MEWiki; after you actually compare the stats, there really is 0 reason to use an older gun once the game hands you your new gun. Which is another thing that's an utterly stupid regression on Bioware's part: why is the game handing me my guns like I'm a freaking toddler? I can find things myself, and honestly, clocking in at just about 25-30 hours, this game needs all it can to extend the game experience. I'd rather have 100 guns that require me to think and actually make decisions because of their minute pros/cons than have the game tell me, "Hey, you reached level 4, time to use a new gun!" No no no no... you take out the things that can't be fixed. You fix the things that don't work. The Mako wasn't broken... it just needed some control refinement and better places to explore. Instead, they scrapped it entirely, taking out a part of the game that, personally, I enjoyed (and knew many people who also enjoyed it, if not for the planets they were forced to explore). ME1 wasn't really full of crap that wasn't needed, because no one complained about it then, did they? Read the reviews of the first game; people had issues with the planets, Mako controls, and inventory system. No one was bitching about how many skills there were... just that the cooldowns were kind of long (which was fixed!). Bioware scrapped a whole bunch of stuff that wasn't unfixable... because it was easier. Mass Effect doesn't need to have a severe amount of depth at all, and that's not what's being argued. It has almost NO depth at all now, and that's the problem. Ok, I can curve my Warp now. Yay. Meanwhile, I lost every statistical thing that I love about RPGs in general. Honestly, for as good as ME2 is, it wasn't worth it to lose all of the RPG things that I did. I will honestly never love ME2 as much as I loved ME1 because it got the RPG nerf-stick so hard... and I'm certainly not alone here. Citations, please? I'd love to know how you know this so well, because that seems like important info. Wow, I may not like ME2, but I'm not about to say no one should like it. It's kind of ballsy for you to say that there are people liking something that they shouldn't be, and be insinuating that they should stop.

Well, that's an interesting instance. SMRPG was one of the old-style RPGs where customization was irrelevant to game design; mechanically, old-style JRPGs were very simple/easy, and the skill came in strategy/execution and dedication (leveling up). SMRPG was no different because the game practically handed you all of your better equipment and dealt with stats on its own (level-up bonuses notwithstanding). Paper Mario was much the same; no true equips, auto stat management, focus on strategy... but they added badges. A little more character depth. Thousand-Year Door really upped the ante with customization, though, by updating the badge system and how badges interact with one another. Again, no real equips, auto stat management, focus on strategy/leveling... only now once you reach level 50 or so, you could go buy a set of badges that let you do 70 damage per hit, lol. Seriously... you can do some broken stuff in that game. So, even old-style JRPG mechanics have had depth increase over time as a direct result of adding in more character customization mechanics.

News sequences are on the wall, but they don't cause your teammates to talk to each other. That's what I liked more than anything. Not to mention, I'd trade back more loading elevators if it meant I could go to the wards I've already been to in the first game. ...that kind of upset me. I get what you're saying with enemy AI, but I've never had my AI squadmates do anything that would screw me that badly; hell, Mordin's been more of a dumbass in ME2 than Ashley ever was in ME1. Seriously, man: if you're shields are low, stop shooting. So the game threw a bunch of stuff at you at all times. That's still content. Lower the drop rate, don't eliminate it entirely. It's really stupid that there are now only 25 fixed guns in the game. I never said to cut out/edit some and not touch another. I just think excising entire portions of the game and not replacing them with anything worthwhile diluted the experience for me. I am definitely enjoying ME2, but I haven't enjoyed the combat in ME2 anywhere near as much as I did in ME1. Ever. Optimization is one thing. Bioware did not optimize. EDIT: I already talked about that in this post, but seriously: drop rate issue =/= mechanics issue. That's content. Lower the drop rate. Not to mention, I already said they could have changed the inventory interface instead of removing it completely. Easier to use? Really? All they did was add two more quick-use buttons. It's not that big of a change. Honestly, if they used that mindset on all the other stuff they took out, it'd have been a much deeper experience overall. Yeah, there is plenty to deny, because those things that "slowed down" the game were what RPG purists like. You don't play an RPG for fast-paced combat: you play for a slower, more cerebral experience. You want fast-paced, play MW2. ME1 had nothing near what any Bethesda game has ever had. Like I said, reduce the skill level cap to 10, maybe take out a skill or two, and they 'd have been fine. Adding the loyalty skills and tactical shift would have been icing on the cake. Instead of streamlining it, they oversimplified it. I've played Infiltrator and Adept so far, and only Adept made me make any actual skill choices (but that's because biotics are so OP); Infiltrator's Cloak is it's class-specific, and it's mostly useless because you can't regen while cloaked. No, ME2 is a good game, but they could have handled the transition so much more gracefully if they took chances instead of pandering so much to people that don't even like RPGs for what they are; instead, they just took out whatever people complained about. Mako control problems? Just take it out! Inventory issues? Just take it out! Actual character customization too overwhelming? Just take it out! That's not how you evolve a franchise unless you're going for the RE4 overhaul method.

Whoops, double post. Sorry about that.

You make it sound like it's binary: either a game is accessable, or it's hard. That's not the case at all! Look at SSB:Melee; anyone can pick up and play that game, but the competitive community also has a metagame where competing is a very difficult thing to do. Pokemon is a very easy game for people to pick up and play, but to battle in a competitive setting, you need to juggle all sorts of stats, do a whole bunch of math, plan like crazy, and have a ton of patience. Super Mario World was pretty simple for just anyone to play, but just anyone wasn't going to complete Star Road. A well-designed game doesn't fit into the paradigm of "either it's accessible or it's hard". You can have depth and ease of interface in one package. I agree with you there, but that's more a level design issue than an accessibility issue; if they spent more time making more things to do on planets and lowered the number of land-able planets to compensate... you'd have no actual mechanical change, but better environments. ...which I loved. It didn't remind me I was playing a game, because they didn't take me out of the game and because the environments felt like one connected area, plus I got to see little snippets of character development that I wouldn't have had the opportunity to see otherwise. Hell, I got a mission from an elevator ride. If they spent more time making more lines for characters to say in them, it would have been fine... which is also a content change, NOT a mechanics change. Also, time the loading elevators in ME1 and compare to the loading screens in ME2; almost the same. Never had a problem with it. Learn2aim, maybe? Do you mean your AI buddies? Maybe I just got lucky, because they never game me problems. I do like ME2's command system more, though. ...and, a content issue, again... In certain ways. I think that it had the same development, but worse cut scene scripting, personally. Again, more content. Irrelevant when discussing game mechanics design. And, you know, make your character play differently. 8 playthroughs with different classes/equips, and I still don't use 100% the same strategies on each one. It sounds like you're trying to find problems. And like I said, many of those are unrelated to actual mechanical design, which is what the article was about.

And that's what turned some people off to ME: the retarded inventory interface. The actual mechanics of battle weren't obtuse at all, and equip management (outside of the interface) was pretty simple for an American RPG; you had 3 main defensive stats, and you augmented those with strategic upgrades like healing or increased shields (the only two I ever used, lol). Weapons were even easier. You had your fire rate, damage, and cooldown, and you could augment those, or give your weapons "elemental" damage types with subequips. Again, if the inventory system wasn't so pants-on-head retarded, it wouldn't have been anywhere near as bad as most ARPGs. That's where "streamlining" comes in. There are plenty of ways to make a game experience more accessable without actually removing game mechanics. Changing the controls or the interface is the best way in most instances. When a battle system, for example, is actually designed in a bad way or an overly complicated way, that's when you need to dumb things down. Take Oblivion. That game had a separate stat for everything (including breathing, thinking, and taking a piss), and sometimes they affected each other! It was way too much, and so the actual design of the game mechanics needed simplification; a minor interface change couldn't fix those problems. Not every game needs that, though, and not every genre is receptive to those changes. Like I already said, RPGs (which I'm thinking is a true misnomer the more and more I think about it) benefit and depend on statistics-based gameplay. Reduce the amount of stats to work with too much or oversimplify the way they work and interact with each other, and you've diluted the game experience. One of the reasons that ME1 was so good at blending RPG and shooter mechanics is because it knew it was a RPG first. Tactically, it was more engaging to have shielding be separate from health and have unlimited shots, but a cooldown meter. Now, ME2's shooter game is just like every other shooter out there (techs / biotics notwithstanding): you shoot until you run out of ammo, and you regen health for absolutely no reason (seriously, the ammo/regen mechanics don't even fit within the confines of the series previous canon). But, part of that is because platformers and kart racers benefit from simple design. That's part of the definition of what a "platformer" or "racer" is. Part of what an "RPG" is makes it more complex than other genres, by its very nature. For that reason, I don't think Heavy Rain, for instance, is an RPG at all. It's an interactive story. I think that game made a genre all its own and has no place being associated with traditional RPG gaming. Look, if you don't like sports, don't play football; don't expect football to change into a game you want to play. Same here. RPGs are a defined, distinguished genre, and part of that is more complex, time consuming gaming. If you don't like it, then find other games, don't expect the whole of RPG-dom to change to fit your needs, because there are other people who need them to stay the way they are now. (I'm not addressing you specifically, btw). EDIT@The Vagrance: Try this (thought experiment; I know you can't actually do this): 1 ) Imagine ME1 2 ) Reduce the cooldown of EVERY SKILL by 75% 3 ) Add in the new cover system 4 ) Add in a better inventory system that lets you organize items, and doesn't make you scroll through them one by one 5 ) ??? 6 ) Profit! Seriously, you just said that for the people who already liked ME1, now they should just switch to Dragon Age, because ME isn't for them anymore. Really?

I, in an overarching sense, agree with the article in the OP, but I think that the article's way of thinking totally disenfranchises gamers who, you know, liked some of the features in the first Mass Effect, and actually DO recognize that sometimes "streamlined" and "dumbed-down" ARE the same thing. I love inventory management (not ME1's system, mind you; the menus definitely needed work). I absolutely love balancing items, comparing statistics, looking at equips like they are a big math puzzle, trying to find creative, inventive ways to squeeze that extra 1% cooldown reduction out of my armors or weapons. It's not for everyone, sure, but then again, a BIG staple of RPGs has always been statistics management. Taking statistics management out of your game is like telling Modern Warfare 2 that it needs less shooting. Sure, RPGs have actual role playing as an important portion of their genre, but that's certainly not the defining factor by ANY means (which, I guess, means that the genre has always been a misnomer). You don't really make important story decisions in Chrono Trigger. The events of FF7 always play out the same way. RPGs are more about battle systems, stats tracking, and skills management than anything else. For instance, just yesterday I was sitting with my friend and a classmate outside of our geology class talking about how obtuse and hard to manage Bethesda RPGs are, and how our classmate now strays away from RPGs because of Morrowwind and Oblivion. My friend asked me what good RPGs there were to draw this classmate back in, and I was going to suggest ME1, Fire Emblem, maybe even a Tales game. My friend cuts me off and suggests Borderlands. Borderlands is a GREAT game. I love it. It is a shooter first, and an RPG second. I play Borderlands when I want to play a shooter, not when I want to play an RPG. It is a shooter with RPG elements. That is what Bioware has turned ME2 into. There is no inventory management (instead of acutally doing the work to make their inventory system better, they got lazy and just took it out entirely), stats management is almost non-existent, there are literally 23 guns in the entire game, and only the Soldier class has access to them all; most classes can get 10-15 AT MOST, and that's including the heavy weapons, weapons can't be customized, the level cap was HALVED, and the skill pool for any given class was taken down by a quarter. You know what would have streamlined the original ME? Cooldown reduction, reducing all skills from max lvl 12 to max lvl 10, one less skill per class, and a better inventory menu system. That's it. That's all that was needed. They took out so much stuff to "streamline" the game that they totally ignored the RPG purists who loved the game for the number crunching, who actually like to manage bars and juggle data. You can have fast-paced battles with strategic depth AND a robust character customization engine that allows for tactical depth BEFORE battle, too; they aren't mutually exclusive. Don't get me wrong; I love ME2. I'm on my second completionist run, and I'm going to be starting a Renegade run in a few days. I have the Collectors Edition (lol puns), and probably won't put this one down for a good few more weeks / months / until Metroid: Other M comes out. ...but anyone who actually thinks that there were NO parts to ME that actually WERE dumbed down is being disingenuous, at best. It was made to include more people. Anyone using Nintendo buzz words in their press releases is dumbing down their product, to some extent. EDIT: I agree with sephfire that games being unnecessarily hard are a big barrier to new gamers, and that we, as veteran gamers, are kind of biased when it comes to game difficulty. That being said, NO ONE can argue that the first ME was hard. At all. It was a cakewalk; you were practically tripping over awesome guns, armors, and equips, and sneezing produced cash money in that game. Now... if you guys don't mind, I'm going to go do Tali's loyalty mission.

Man, no wonder all my friends think I'm insane for posting on these forums. Fine; I'm done here. Cheers.

No, the official trailer had even worse animations; at least there was a hint of motion blur in the shaky-cam footage. My opinion still stands, though: those physics looked bad, and I'm really, REALLY hoping that Sega wises up and fixes that problem before release... although I'm not betting on it. In my defense, though... you weren't reading it right.

Has no point? Again... discussion forum. Someone made a thread that boils down to "Sonic 4... discuss?", and so when someone discusses it, you whine? Also, I'm hardly a fanboy; when a company's product doesn't live up to hype or advertising, I talk about it. One of my most vocal and critical complaints about Mass Effect 2 is that Bioware, a company built around their RPGs, took all of the RPG out of ME2. Personally, I can't get behind a game that is touted as an RPG, but reduces the level cap by 30 and cuts the number of skills in half, simultaneously eradicating all inventory management. You can pout all you want about the game not being released yet, but before the game is released is the only possible time that discussion could possibly have any effect on the game (as small a chance as that might be). If we're going to discuss anything, now is a much better time than later. A ) If it's a publicity stunt, people should wake up to it before they waste 60$ on it and reinforce the notion that Sega's doing the right thing. I think that's the big success of the Wii, for instance: hardcore ceasing to buy games in any significant way to prove a point that half-assing your early games only destroys your core demographic. Hopefully, Nintendo + 3rd parties will figure that out next generation because we've hit their sales so hard. B ) I don't care if some Sega exec sheds a tear because I disapprove of their engine, and it surprises me that you'd assume I would. Why? Because I discuss things on a discussion forum? (It really does surprise me that I'm being b*tched at for that, btw) I disagree, and I hope that someone sees what I see, is more critical of the final product, and judges that final product on its true merits, rather than "Omg, Sonic! They said it'd be like the old ones!!1", and thus giving Sega another free pass and a free 60$. So I take the realist approach. Bite me. C ) Quite a few games? You mean quite a few terrible games that only sell well because of the ignorant masses, right? If anything, Sega's repertoire of games hurts your argument. Ignoring the obviously disingenuous "fanboy" comment, Sega hasn't proven they could make a well designed and implemented game in 10 years. Their entire goal is to change that stigma with Sonic 4. They have a lot riding on this. We should be critical, especially early on, when they still have a hope of delaying the game and making changes where necessary. Oh, christ no. Artists should have no business going anywhere near a physics engine. It seems (again) that you haven't read properly, because the artists should do their own thing on their own side of the development office until the time is right to present their work to the programmers for implementation. Until then, they should be far, far away from the programmers, perfecting character design, story, and environmentals. The look of a game can be created without an engine, just like the engine of a game can be tested without visuals. EDIT: I've lurked here enough to know that was sarcasm. It still needed to be addressed, though...

That's odd, because Bleck's had quite a few posts here, too. @Bleck: Actually, you don't. You need flat terrain, a few platforms, a spherical player avatar, and a copy of the program running in a basic Windows construct. You don't need: * a main menu * music * 3D models * parallax scrolling * particle effects ...should I continue?

Based off of previous experience... YES. A thousand times yes. Gameplay should always come first. Prototype everything first; the final physics test build shouldn't even have anthropomorphic hedgehogs in it, assuming they're doing it right. That's not to say that the artists can't prototype for themselves... but it's retarded to build levels when you don't even know how far your main character can jump. The point is that artists/writers should be as far away from the programmers as possible until the gameplay elements are as close to final as possible; not only does it keep the design close to the original proposed game design document, but it discourages feature creep, which is a big reason projects get behind schedule.

Again, the point of releasing trailers and teasers is to drum up support by making people positively judge your game before it's even released. That's the point; it's the marketing department's JOB to make people think the finished product is going to be good before it's even finished. With that comes the risk that people won't be positively influenced. You're hammering me for "making judgments on a video game haven't played and hasn't been released", but there are PAGES UPON PAGES of people doing that exact same thing... because that's the point. You don't like it? Might I suggest a cup of "GTFO of discussion threads"? *sigh* Seriously? Really? It's almost 5 where I'm at; I don't have time to teach people how to read. Nowhere in any of my posts do I assert that I have more experience playing Sonic games than any other person in this thread. Re-read them. I don't do it. The closest I come is a possible inference that I have more experience than a random guy off of the street. The point of my posts is that if Joe Schmoe who never played classic Sonic saw that trailer, he'd think there was nothing off, but to someone who's actually played classic Sonic, you can tell that the physics are different... which is NOT what Sega says it's going for. Sega says their aim is a retro Sonic feel, and that's not what the trailer showed us. The trailer showed us exactly what many people are feared would happen: Sega would confuse "momentum-based speed" with "pure, unadulterated speed" and turn the game into something where all you need to do to win is hold down right and jump at the right time.

You do realize that the point of that wasn't to compare MY PARTICULAR ABILITIES in analysis to anyone else's here, right? You did read the entire post and get the overarching message, right? The one about how the brain can decipher tiny bits of data in a video and be able to approximate physical responses from them? The point that one could approximate how the game will play based off of gameplay footage augmented by the (very important) prerequisite of thorough experience? ...right?

Well, the whole point is that Sega is marketing this game as a return to form, a Sonic 4 that will continue the pedigree and gameplay of Sonic's 1-3. Sega is itself comparing Sonic 4 (hypothetical poop) to the past Sonic games (previous poop); the only difference is that you think the originals were crap, which makes Sega's point (and ultimately, any point based thereof) moot. You're arguing something completely different/off-topic at that point.

Hey, I was one of those people creaming my pants during the first release teaser. I want this game to be good, but I'm not going to let retro nostalgia make me buy another piece of crap game. If it's good, I certainly won't complain. Also, yeah, you can comment on gameplay videos; there's a lot of subtle data in a video that allows you to do so. For instance, after playing Sonic games since I was six and having an intimate and intuitive knowledge of how the characters move on screen, the mind can compare the video footage to how it remembers Sonic moving in the past, allowing you to make a reasonable guess to how the physics are without holding the controller; it's not perfect, and it's not final, but the brain is smarter than you're giving it credit for. It's just like the Uncanny Valley effect: your brain can perceive tiny differences in motion and tell that they aren't what they should be. If Sega wants people to hold off all judgment until the game is out, then they should stop releasing trailers. The point of that video was to make us feel something about the game (hopefully something good). It's SUPPOSED to manipulate your feelings BEFORE THE GAME IS RELEASED. So, yeah. They show me footage, and I'm going to judge that footage. Don't act like you haven't, too, because if it made you happy, or in any way pushed you to buy the game, then you have. DigiPen Institute of Technology. 50% owned by Nintendo. Next door to Nintendo of America. Look it up. The professors wouldn't even let us turn in concept art without working prototypes.

Why? Because Sega has a habit of releasing garbage to the general public that isn't even worthy of the title "Alpha build" much less "final copy". The fact that they had a single playable build of the game with physics like that is reason enough for me to worry; any reasonable person who knew what they were doing with the franchise (and who put this game up on a pedastal like Sega has done so far) wouldn't have even let the artists work on the title screen before the physics were perfected. Even taking into account my biased hyperbole, it seriously worries me that the build in that video ever existed at all. You say why assume those are the final physics? Because I have 10 years of games that play the same way.

I don't understand how that footage looks "good". I think Sega is making a big mistake here, because it may look pretty, but it doesn't seem like it will feel like classic Sonic: the momentum is all wrong. There were clearly times when Sonic shouldn't have jumped as high or far as he did, or shouldn't have gotten up a particular incline, but did. If Sega makes the mistake of having the game run like it's "Push Right to Win" or something, this game will look good, but play like garbage. Seriously. Go back to sprites and 2D if you have to. Just get the fucking physics engine right.

I just want to say... YES. I don't have any specific critiques: I just want more. Please more.

...Ok, sorry. Didn't want to derail your thread, just wanted to save you some time/money/headaches. Have fun dealing with your record label; I really hope it works out for you.